


Just Once

by lemniscate (savvyl)



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, blood mention, reincarnation theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 17:31:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3904840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvyl/pseuds/lemniscate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Day 4 of Ganlink Week: Burden & Extrication!  Link has been tasked with getting rid of Ganondorf before he can rise to power, but memories that aren't theirs make them hesitate to fight one another.  Somewhat related to my fic for Day 3.  Non-specific game characters, likely not in any canon game setting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Once

“You know my conditions.”

“And you know I can’t agree to them.” 

“Then we’re at a stalemate, and this meeting was pointless.  Good evening, Princess,” Ganondorf bid, turning away. 

Zelda could feel her frustration rising.  They both knew how this would end.  This would be the last time they came together to talk peace for the sake of their people.  The next time they met would be the same battle it had always been.

 She watched as Ganondorf crossed the courtyard, his broad shoulders sagging with a weariness as though the weight of his pauldrons had suddenly become too much.  She felt a resonance with that sight, and before she could stop herself, her deepest hopes began to fall from her lips:  “What if, just this once—“

But the rest would not come.

Ganondorf turned half toward her, smiling bitterly.  He glanced over her head at the wall which separated the courtyard from the barracks, listening for a moment to the sounds of clashing steel against the sunset. 

“He’s here, isn’t he?” the gerudo king asked at length. 

The princess gave no answer.  Ganondorf turned again, and left.

 

 

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Princess?” Impa asked, as they watched the boy pull his green cap over a mess of blond hair.  “He’s just a boy, and certainly no soldier.”

“He’s the same age as me,” Zelda reminded, feeling once more the pressure that would soon come with the title Queen.  “And you’ve been training him personally for months.  There’s no one I would trust more to prepare him.”

Impa smiled at the compliment, though it did little to ease her discomfort.  “He really is the hero, then?”

“I’m certain,” Zelda replied, sadly.  “If the triforce hasn’t appeared to him by now, it certainly will tonight.”

“The hero reborn, and if we’re lucky, he won’t even have a great evil to face,” Impa mused.

“No,” Zelda agreed, “if we’re lucky, he won’t.  If all goes well, tonight he’ll only be a murderer.”

 

 

As far as stealth training went, Link was beginning to find that his hadn’t been up to snuff.  Though he had no doubt that the lithe woman who had been drilling him, Impa, attendant of the princess and queen-to-be, would be fully capable of sneaking past the encampment with more grace than he, at the very least he was getting the job done.

The thing was, all his training had been based around stone walls.  He was not prepared to deal with the cluster of tents stretched over a patch of Hyrule Fields.

Link paused behind one to breathe for a moment, and take stock of how much further he had to go.  He dared not linger long in case the tents occupants detected something off, and since the tents all seemed communal, he had a feeling he would have more than a single irate gerudo to deal with if he were caught.

He peered around the edge of the tent at the large structure in the center of the encampment, more rectangular and semi-permanent than the others, with a standard hanging from either side of the flap.  Not for the first time he wondered why this task had been entrusted to him, rather than Impa, or someone with more military training.  The princess had promised him that there was no easy answer, but that as far as she understood it, the best candidates would be him, or herself.  And with the king dead and her coronation on the horizon, this was not a risk she could take her advisors all insisted, and in his rational mind Link agreed.

It didn’t mean he was particularly confident, or happy to be here.

Link dropped low to the grass, skirting beyond the halo of the large campfire.  Two guards were following the circle of tents clockwise, and he had to do all he could to avoid them by waiting until their backs were turned and carrying on as quickly and quietly as possible.  He gripped his bow in his sweaty palm, and pressed forward.

 

 

When Ganondorf was pulled violently from sleep, it took an enormous amount of self-control to keep from bellowing his pain, his anger, his desire to destroy and rend and conquer.  He had hardly expected a peaceful sleep, but the force of his emotions took him by surprise nonetheless, and he sat up shaking, swinging his legs over the side of his cot and resting his head in his hands.  The older he got, the more violently the dreams took him, as though punishment for delaying his fate.  The longer he resisted the force that drove him to destroy Link and Princess Zelda, to seize their portions of the triforce and set Hylia’s land ablaze, the more gruesome and gory those dreams became.  He had to end this. 

He sat carding his fingers back through thick auburn hair.  He tried to dislodge the memory of crushed and broken bodies, familiar blond hair wet with blood and what it had felt like to be so very _beastly,_ muscles tense and senses heightened so that the soft rustle of his tent flap being moved snapped his gaze to the front.

An arrow was aimed in his direction, but his gaze was drawn past it to bright hair so very like that which had haunted his dreams.  Ganondorf felt a brief moment of relief as the vision became hazy, as the haunting sight reflect little more than the desires a drive for power stirred against his will.

“I thought you would come soon,” he said on an exhalation, “but I did not think it would be tonight.  Princess Zelda must be desperate—she didn’t even properly equip you,” he observed, eyeing the plain arrow.

“You’re the one making her desperate,” Link accused, the sound of his voice a shock for its novelty and the way it sliced through the heavy atmosphere.  “She shared her vision with me.  If I don’t do this, there will be a war, and Hyrule can’t—”

“Can’t what?” Ganondorf challenged, rising to his feet and gesturing out to his sides.  “Can’t handle the few remaining gerudo?  Give it up, boy, you hardly know a damn thing about the politics behind this conflict, and even less about the larger things.”

Despite himself, Link cautiously lowered the arrow, frowning.  For the first time, he was beginning to question if he was in the right by being here.  It was true he had heard that the Gerudo population was dwindling.  What good could assassinating their king do, if he could hardly muster an army?

Ganondorf latched onto that moment of hesitation.  He had a vague sense that another version of himself had found an opportunity like this once after blood had been shed and the two of them were too far gone, but he was not too far gone now.  Zelda’s words, the impossibility that they were, echoed in his thoughts.

Ganondorf approached him as though he were a skittish beast.  To Link's surprise, he allowed it.  Some as yet unnamed sensation skittered up his arms and around his sides.  As Ganondorf drew nearer and nearer, his breath quickened, and then came to a complete stop as a large, rough hand hovered a hairs breadth away from the side of his face."You let me this close, once," Ganondorf observed, voice quiet and mournful.  "We had fought then, until we were both bloody and beaten and so very tired.  And you let me come this close."

The vague allusions broke the spell, and Link took a step back, dropping the bow and drawing his sword instead.  He leveled it Ganondorf, shaken and angry.  "Stop.  Don't confuse me, and don't speak in riddles.  Princess Zelda does the same thing, the two of you talk like there's some big secret I should know about, but she refuses to tell me anything about it.

"Does she?" Ganondorf asked, his eyes falling to the sword tip now directed at his chest as weariness stole over him once more.  "Put that away, boy.  Whatever you intended to do coming here, it won't happen tonight.  You, the princess, and myself are all inextricably linked.  Put the sword away and I'll show you."

“Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t, really.”

“Then why—”

“You’re awful talkative this time, aren’t you?” Ganondorf asked, though he knew the accusation was unfair.  Neither of them were the same person as their past incarnation, not really, but he felt like he was closer with each lifetime and each new layer of collapsed memories.  “For all you have to ask, I’m surprised none of the questions are about the mark on your hand.”

In the moment his head turned toward his hand, Link cursed his own stupidity for falling for what surely was a trap.

But Ganondorf hadn’t lied.  Through the leather of his glove a small triangle had begun to glow.

Ganondorf was in his space again, gently taking his hand, as though a normal touch would be enough to break the bones of his palm.  He turned the hand, and revealed a similarly placed triangle on the back of his own.

“I could take this from you now,” the dark king mused aloud, grip tightening ever so slightly.  "I could take the triforce from you now, but the moment I do, this charade ends, and the battle must begin.  Help me keep this charade going a little longer."

A shiver ran down Link’s spine.  This felt intimate, and oddly familiar.  He found himself relenting, his fingers going lax in Ganondorf’s hand as the gerudo lord ran his thumb against Link’s fingers.

“What’s happening?” Link asked, a little breathless, confused by the sudden turn they had taken.

“Something that’s happened once before,” Ganondorf answered cryptically, raising the hand to the side of his head, turning to press a kiss against tender wrist.

Link’s expression changed from dazed pleasure to a look of annoyance.  He tensed and tried to pull his wrist free, but Ganondorf’s grip tightened.  “I told you not to—”

Ganondorf’s free hand had reached for his hair, fingers threading into the blond mess and tightly gripping before his lips crashed to the Hero’s shocked mouth.

Link’s sword fell forgotten to the ground.  His now freed hand reached up to grasp Ganondorf’s shirt, and he pushed forcefully back into the kiss before rationality had time to catch up with him.  He couldn’t remember anything like this happening before, but he was carrying himself through actions as though he knew them by heart.  It suddenly felt as though a tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders.  The assassination he had been tasked with had been forgotten, and the fate of a kingdom was no longer in his hands—for the moment.

For the moment, Ganondorf could forget their fated existence.  For the moment he did not need to feel cursed, though he was certainly being driven by other beastial desires.  His hand dropped from the hero’s hair, arm wrapping around his back and pulling him possessively closer.  This didn’t feel as sudden as it had been.  It felt like a continuation, something he had been waiting for with an eagerness that set him hovering on the edge, and now that he had it, he could finally breathe again.  Perhaps Zelda had known about the tryst their past selves had entertained before their final battle, and feared what could happen if Link did not act before these memories came back.

Regretfully, memories would do little to stop the inevitable.  Still, they could have just one night.

Link was responsive, pushing back into the kiss with all the energy he received, but when Ganondorf began to guide him toward the cot he was startled back into self-awareness.  “Wait,“ he demanded breathlessly, breaking the kiss and attempting to push himself from Ganondorf’s chest.  “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”

“The point of this isn’t to follow the rules, it’s to deviate,” Ganondorf insisted, too impatient and hungry for more satiation to explain.  Goddesses, he longed for this sort of conquest in his very bones, and though he rarely allowed himself to entertain it, being on the verge was driving him mad.  He appreciated that Link was far from a submissive partner in any regards, that he seemed to show as much determination and vigor in the bedroom as he had on the battlefield then and now, but he no longer felt inclined towards speech. 

“Give in to me tonight,” Ganondorf demanded, gripping the wrist in his hand hard enough to draw a hiss from Link’s lips.  He restrained himself, loosening his hold and bringing the wrist to his lips once more to kiss it apologetically.  “Just tonight,” he pleaded, surprised by his own voice when it was softened.  “You can try and kill me another time, when I’ll have done something to earn it.  I swear.”

The whispered promise danced up Link’s arms and down his spine, leaving tiny sparks across his skin.  He ought to resist, because there would be no explaining this to Zelda if he attempted to return to the castle, but he was inexplicably driven to do quite the opposite.  Somehow, rebelling against what was supposed to be right sounded an awful lot like freedom.

Snatching his hands back for himself, he gripped Ganondorf’s long red hair and yanked him down, giving him a kiss full of all the same force as the first one he had received.

“Just tonight,” he agreed, and the promise relieved the sensation of heavy chains wrapped around them both.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, I definitely COULD add a chapter with some nsfw content if anybody wanted me to, but for whatever reason I felt compelled to keep that separate from the prompt response. Let me know if you want it~


End file.
